Win 25 Lite accounts from Vzaar video hosting

Today our good friends at Vzaar are giving away 25 lite accounts of their professional commercial video hosting.

As you know, websites like YouTube are great for hosting your online videos.

The biggest downside is that you have little control over the environment in which your video is shown, and there’s nothing that says your video can’t be taken down without notice (or any server uptime guarantee).

Not the most ideal situation for a company trying to present a professional image.

Read on for more details about the Vzaar video hosting platform and on how to participate to win one of the 25 lite accounts being given away today.

So, what is Vzaar? Vzaar is a commercial video hosting platform that can deliver video to your website or mobile app. You can easily customize the size, color, and borders of your video player, and create playlists. There are multiple video settings to choose from, including econding settings, so you have full control over the quality of playback. A bulk uploader and a desktop uploader are available to make managing your videos simpler and faster.

Embedded videos are shown at 768 x 576 pixels, and are encoded at 1280 x 720. You also have the option to tell Vzaar not to re-encode your video. All videos are iPhone compatible, making it easier to reach a larger audience. Video length isn’t restricted, but there are restrictions on video size: 1/2 GB for the free trial, 1 GB for the Professional-level packages, and 2 GB for the business-level packages.

The video player can be further customized to meet your exact needs. You can add your own logo or other branding information (or a watermark) over the video and create a customized screen for when your video ends. There’s also an audio-only player for when you don’t need video. Options for auto-play and looping are available. And Vzaar offers a poster frame and thumbnail picker tool (another thing that isn’t always available on free sites).

It’s a video platform designed with both basic users and developers in mind. Whether you just need a simple plug-and-play video solution or something that you can access via API for more advanced applications, Vzaar has a solution for you. Privacy and domain control options are also included, so you can control exactly where your videos are shown (something most free video hosting sites don’t offer).

Vzaar includes distribution management tools (including ecommerce tools and eBay embedding, and tools to embed videos into MailChimp email newsletters), and developer tools to make it easy to leverage the Vzaar platform for your website or web app. It uses an advanced Rest API, supports third-party players, and has a JavaScript API. Their developer hub offers libraries and other tools for working with the Vzaar APIs. There’s also a basic embed video code for those situations where you just need to include a video. Vzaar will also work with Google Analytics for tracking your views.

You can use Vzaar for virtually any kind of video content you want, from podcasts to commercials to short films or anything in between. Pricing is reasonable, starting at just $49 for 50GB of playback bandwidth per month and plans that can handle as much as 4TB of playback bandwidth (with custom solutions available for higher usage). You have the option to set a cap for your bandwidth usage for any potential overages, so you can rest assured that you won’t suddenly get a huge hosting bill you weren’t expecting.

How to participate:

To enter this contest and get the chance to win one of the 25 Lite Accounts being given away, please leave a comment below. Only one comment per person. Duplicate entries will be voided.

We’ll announce the results in one week, on August 24th, 2011. The results will be posted here on WDD and all winners will also be contacted by email for more details.

Thanks to Vzaar for bringing us these great prizes and good luck to all of you…

WDD staff are proud to be able to bring you this daily blog about web design and development. If there's something you think we should be talking about let us know @DesignerDepot.More articles by WebdesignerDepot Staff

We’ve been starting to use Vzaar with a client, and it was the first time I’d run across them. And it looks really great! I’d love to have an account of my own to use to explore the product in detail. So I could reccomend to others (nudge nudge!). pplleeeeaaase?! ;)
And thanks as always for the great blog!

Count me in! this comes at an opportune time, as I may be getting my first website with webisodes. I was just starting to research my options…maybe this will sway us.

http://www.ebaseworks.com Alfirus Ahmad

Count me in and i’ll spread the words to South Asia

http://twitter.com/kevinou KEV!NOU™

This is awesome. Lock me in.

http://www.visinno.com/ Visinno

it would nice to have a reliable and economical video hosting source that is not capricious.

http://www.auctoricity.com/services.aspx web design for cities

Sounds like it could be fun.

http://twitter.com/ValoCreative Valo TV

looks like fun. count me in as well :)

Joan Carles Damas Reyes

Really interesting!!! I would like to try it.

Ragingmon Mon

Whoaaaa!!!

http://www.facebook.com/webdeziner Abhilash M Nair

Wow! seems like a nice offer. Would love to try this out :)

http://www.facebook.com/dnbnc Dn Bianco

Hey! Count me in! Thank you!

http://www.andisites.com Andrea

Perfect! I’ve been looking for a video platform for my clients as an alternative to YouTube. Vzaar does everything I need it to, and more. I’d love the chance to put a lite account to use right away. Thanks, Vzaar! :-)

http://twitter.com/GFCTheme GFC Theme

Nice! Count me in! ;)

http://www.visin.com Thomas Townsend

This could be a great tool for our Non Profit Video’s currently on YouTube,,,,but we need an HTML5 compliant multi player so our videos show up on Mobile Devices and tablets. Operationhugahero.org

mahir haroon

i would like one for sure

Amos Vryhof

Count Me in too!

http://wsotracer.com Phil Meyer

I need it I need it I need it… :-D
YAY – I WON!
Heh – no harm in being positive…

Jvdh78

Great! I have been looking for Youtube alternatives this week for our video site.

AlexAltea

Nive giveaway. I’d love to try it out. Count me in, please!

Anonymous

Count me in!!

Anonymous

This looks like a neat service to try out.

Adrian L

I’d really love to give this a whirl!

Cindy B

Ooohhh! Pick me!

David

I could definitely use this!

http://www.facebook.com/people/Robert-Doyle/780765704 Robert Doyle

I’m in!

http://twitter.com/vidibell vidibell

count me in!!!

gl

Sounds great, fingers croxxed !!

http://twitter.com/W3_Research NikKarzis

Count me in as well!

Jeremy Worboys

I’ll have a crash as well.

http://twitter.com/tonedarklights Tanya Kan

This is absolutely fantastic to offer a service that looks after more exacting needs of the customer and web designer! I like the variety of distribution tools and development tools that Vzaar offers. :)

http://www.wix.com/wwirtz1/portfolio wwirtz1

Cool thing you guys are doing, let me know when I win next week lol.

http://identyme.com IdentyMe

Good service!

Nik Nieuwenhuis

awesome stuff!!

http://profiles.google.com/jahangir.agha jahangir agha

Amazing offer. Please count me in for this offer :)

Would be a wonderful experience to use vzaar to host my videos :)

MM Remember

Great, please add me to the list!

http://www.daweigg.com daweigg

Hope I win! Would love to see how I could play with the API.

http://twitter.com/inTOWN_NL Tineke Timmerman

Trying to count the 41 comments to add +1 ;-)

http://www.facebook.com/educsis Edwin Orellana

Awesome, just what ive been looking for

Nelson

i will use this on our church website, hope i win, thanks

Niju Mohan

I am in…

Anonymous

ho yeah!!!!

http://twitter.com/codeworxx codeworxx ws

count me in, please!

kmccann

Pick me – as a representative of Canterbury Enterprise Group (student run non-profit organisation), we could really benefit from this technology for our new adverts!